I recently received an email that I wanted to share with you, since there are many cellists out there who have pain and tension in the bow thumb (I myself struggled with it for almost a decade).

​Sometimes these issues can be sorted out with a change in technique, but sometimes they hang on no matter what changes we make.

Hello Nan,

I am one of your followers and enjoy reading your cello tips and stories.

I am an adult cello student of 5 years in the Cincinnati area and have been taking private lessons all along. I am playing in Suzuki book 4 and other pieces on a similar level.

Recently I have been having difficulty with a trigger thumb in my right hand and I suspect it is due to tension in my bow hand. The problem first started in September and I had a cortisone injection which cleared up the issue until late November, when it resurfaced.

I took a month break over the holidays with very little physical playing but some mental playing and air bowing. I was hoping the rest from playing would help but it didn't.

I would welcome any suggestions you could recommend.

Thank you,Teresa

There's nothing more heartbreaking to me than a cellist who can't play without pain! I hope Teresa gets the mystery solved soon. Though no one in my studio has a right trigger thumb, I do have students with arthritis, bone spurs, and various right arm problems that can be exacerbated by thumb tension--and I am hoping the exercise outlined in the following video can help keep tension at bay, no matter what the ailment!

As I mentioned in the video, squeezing the bow between the fingers and thumb can cause problems. If you suspect the way you are holding the bow is hurting you, check out my other blog post on keeping thumb tension at bay HERE.

Sudden Floppy String Syndrome has hit several members of my studio. They have come in with cellos that have completely de-tuned themselves in the case, on the stand, and sometimes right before their eyes. Many times the strings are so loose that they are hanging off the cello! Pleas for help via text, huge chunks of lesson time devoted to tuning, frustration about not having been able to practice, and even feelings of guilt--all of these are signs that the season of SFSS is upon us, and cellists everywhere are suffering.

You may be thinking: What causes it and what can we do to prevent it from happening to us?

I will answer these questions below and provide instructions for making a little gadget that can help end the threat of SFSS forever!

But first, a quick story.

Moisture, Gone With The Wind

Wood cells

I was just about to pack up after a rehearsal at my house one winter evening, when someone opened the door. A sharp wind blew in--right at me--and my cello made a loud pop, like someone had hit it with a drumstick. That one wind gust had dried out the front of my cello so drastically that the wood pulled apart and created a crack--instantly!

​Luckily I was able to get it fixed, but ever since that night I have been haunted by the knowledge of the power of dry air.

When wood dries out, water evaporates from the cells of the wood and they shrink. This is normal. In fact, the seams of your cello (where the pieces are glued together) are meant to come apart fairly easily in order to prevent cracks in the wood pieces themselves. Usually the contracting of the wood will happen so gradually that the weak seam will come apart to accommodate the warping--and the wood itself will stay in tact. (I guess this is why they don't use Gorilla Glue on cellos seams, huh?)

Your cello will most likely lose moisture from time to time, no matter how hard you try. But what we need to prevent is the drastic and sudden loss of moisture. That's the real crack-maker...

...and the cause of SFSS!

To explain, let's apply the wood-drying scenario to your pegs:

The pegs are made of ebony, which is a type of wood. When this wood dries out, the pegs become skinnier. The cells of the wood of the peg box will shrink too. So the peg hole gets bigger, the peg gets smaller, and the whole system loses the friction that it needs to stick in place and hold the string in tune. So it comes loose and the string unravels. Sometimes all the way. And sometimes all of the strings at once!

When my students have experienced this, the sound post has managed to stay in place most of the time (thank goodness, since I can't fix that in a lesson!), so it's just a matter of tuning the cello back up with the pegs.

But how can we prevent this from happening?

The answer is simple: HUMIDIFIERS!

Commercial Humidifiers

There are lots of different humidifiers for your cello. Just do a quick Google search for CELLO HUMIDIFIER and you'll see what I'm talking about! Amazon even has a whole page devoted to them.

​I won't go into all the pros and cons-- especially since I think you can make one yourself that will be even better--but I will tell you that Stephanie Voss at Voss Violins no longer recommends Dampits since they can damage the wood when used improperly (which happens a lot).

DIY Humidifiers

Mimi with her homemade humidifier

One cold day last winter, one of my students--we'll call her Mimi (since that's her name!)--came in to her lesson with a homemade humidifier for her cello.

That really got me thinking about DIY humidifiers.

I remember my first encounter with with a homemade humidifier was years ago. My teacher cut two short sections from an ice cube tray, nestled little, damp, ice-cube-sized sponge pieces in the ice cube depressions, and placed the whole unit in each c-bout while her cello rested in its case. She didn't move the case while these were in it, since the trays and sponges would rattle around loose in the case.

A humidifier I made

That had gotten me thinking about how to make my own humidifier, one that could stay in the case when you moved it.

I decided to try my hand at it, and this first version was fun to make. I drilled holes in bar-soap travel cases, filled them with cut-to-size sponges, and secured them with rubber bands.

I gave a few of them away to students and eventually ended up buying a manufactured humidifier for my case. But I can honestly say, I think the DIY versions are just as good!

​Mimi's humidifier is simple and elegant--even easier to make than Martha's ice cube trays or my soap box. (After all, not everyone gets as excited about power tools as I do.) So I want to share with you how to go about creating your own humidifier with stuff you probably have at home.

Make Your Own in 6 Easy Steps

When it's winter, you should check the sponge everyday and re-wet when it feels dry.

Update: Mimi strikes again!

Mimi came to her lesson just last week with a peculiar bag hanging from a peg.

It was another humidifier!

This time, it's a version that can be nearer to the pegs (even better to prevent SFSS!) and is even easier to make.

Just stuff a few damp paper towels into a fruit bag and hang it from a peg.

That's it.

This is perfect humidifier for those of you who prefer your cello to live outside the case when you aren't playing it.

Thanks, Mimi, for these great ideas!

Blue Sky, Gonna Cry

On the way to a gig, noticing danger

​In Atlanta, the air is pretty humid most of the time. But when winter approaches, you can get some very dry days. A beautiful clear blue sky is the perfect indication of dry air in the atmosphere, so it has a deeper meaning for cellists like us. When I notice there isn't a cloud in the sky, my thoughts instantly go to my cello. Did I wet the humidifier recently?

Even if the sky isn't so blue, the heat in your house can dry out your cello too. Besides making or buying a humidifier, you should keep your cello in the case (unless you need it to stay on a stand to promote practicing) and keep it away from any doors, windows, or air registers in your house.

Let me know if you have experienced SFSS and what you have to done to prevent it in the comments below. I would love to hear from you!

​Just like a painter using the three primary colors to conjure any hue desired, we cellists can use three bowing variables in different amounts to create a rainbow of tone colors.

Three Primary Colors of Tone

Here's a video explaining what I mean:

How Do You Feel Today?

Actual copy of Martha's poster!

​My teacher used to have a poster on her wall, the How-Do-You-Feel-Today poster, that she would point out to us when she felt we needed some inspiration for the sentiment in a piece we were playing.

“What mood are you going for here?” she would ask.

​We would need at least one idea for each phrase—maybe more—and we would then have to decide how we would alter our placement, weight, and speed to create these different impressions.

I thought it was such fun to work out a way to convince the audience of the story as was telling without saying a word!​

I tended to get a little crazy with the whole color situation!

​You can use this same technique in your own cello life!

Feel free to print and keep this poster (below) near your practice area to refer to when deciding on a mood. Or simply think of an adjective to describe the emotion in one section of the piece you are working on.

Then experiment with changing the different variables of placement, weight, and speed until you find something that seems to you to express that adjective most effectively!

You are an Artist!

This technique unearths a whole new layer of cello fun that facilitates the ultimate expression in music.

Watch my new video below to be sure you aren’t inadvertently bringing about your own doom with this crazy idea about practice...

Perhaps what I say in this video will seem like common sense to you. If so, you're one of the lucky ones. All I know is that I wasted an entire decade of my cello life playing instead of practicing--and I don't want you to make the same mistake!

My view from onstage at a Mannheim Steamroller concert in Athens. One of the many holiday gigs!

It was about a week before Christmas and I was massively overscheduled--but the Falcons wanted Celli to be involved in a project for the playoffs.

Sure, I thought. AFTER Christmas!

In case you didn't know this: Christmas is when most musicians make most of their money. Sometimes our extra earnings from the month of December are the only thing that keeps us fed in the lean summer months! And because there is so much work to be had then, it keeps us extremely busy.

Here's how busy I was:

​Again, I was thinking this would go down AFTER Christmas.

But they needed it done the week before the holiday-- DURING THE BUSIEST WEEK OF THE YEAR!

First things first...

Step 1:

We had to go into the studio to record a track. The idea was to remake Jermaine Dupri's legendary "Welcome to Atlanta." Luckily, I had a 10-hour bus ride a few days before we were scheduled to go into the studio to record, so I could listen to the track and write out parts for us to play.

Then we had to shoot the video...

It was HARD to find a day where we could reschedule everything to try to fit in a video shoot. But we were told it was to be on the ROOF of the new Mercedes Benz Stadium, so we had to make it work!

The day before the shoot, we were told it was going to be too foggy to get any footage of the skyline behind us on the roof so they asked if we could reschedule. We couldn't make it work, so we would just have to shoot our part of the video indoors.

We were so disappointed!

In the meantime, I had to figure out how to do "edgy, goth" makeup! That was an adventure in and of itself!

The toilet situation...

Mercedes Benz stadium

​Once we got to the stadium, our green room was quite sparse.

Turns out it was the Press Room.

Someone came and took us to a better green room...

The Press Room

COACH DAN QUINN'S OFFICE!!!

Luxuriating in DQ's office

This was very nice--much better than the press room! But there was one disgusting aspect...

The toilet!

I know. Weird, right? I definitely took a picture, but I won't post it here in case some of you have sensitive stomachs. Let's just say that I had never seen that many different colors of MOLD before.

Of course, the powers-that-be sent in someone to clean it ASAP.

It only occurred to me after the shoot that this was probably a good luck dirty toilet. You know how that sport-ball jinx stuff goes. Maybe this was a "don't-clean-until-after-the-playoffs-are-over" type of dirty toilet.

Ooops.

The shoot itself was so much fun, but it was lots of hard work too. I had to concentrate on looking mean (not my usual face as you probably know!), and we had to make the same wild arm motions over and over and over... Luckily we were playing to our previously recorded track, so we didn't have to sound good. Whew.

To the roof...

Though we didn't actually get to shoot on the roof, they let us go with the whole crew to the roof to watch Jermaine's shoot after our part was finished filming. I have never in my life been that excited to climb so many steps! At one point we were standing on a catwalk right behind the halo screen which I had watched from way down below at so many Atlanta United games!

Aftermath...

Well the Falcons made it to the playoffs, so our video was released on January 4th 2018. If they hadn't made it, I would have felt so guilty about that toilet cleaning... plus the video would not have been released until NEXT SEASON!

You can find the article they put out about the video HERE.And the finished product itself:

Another side benefit is Jermaine Dupri and I are now besties. Although I am not sure he knows that...

More new friends made along the way...

by Erica Vacare

Erica is a student of Nan's who rediscovered the cello as an adult. She enjoys biting off music in small chunks, like a turtle eating a piece of fruit.

“Have you seen Chicken Attack?” asked my friend Chris. “I don’t think so,” I replied.I opened the YouTube link he sent. “Looks like a kung fu movie,” I thought. “Wait, did that chicken just turn into a ninja?! Oh my god. Now he’s fighting that guy. And this music is awesome.”

I informed Chris that this was the best thing I’d ever seen, and listened again. And again. I was hooked. After the fourth play in a row, I glanced across the room. Surprisingly, my catdid not look perturbed in the slightest, despite the continuous stream of yodeling coming from my laptop. I clicked the video a fifth time, and pictured how it would sound on the cello. I had to try it. A couple of Google searches later, I was the happy downloader of a straightforward-looking transcription. I printed it out and set it on my music stand.

The first thing I noticed was that the notes on the staff looked higher than Snoop Dogg. No problem, I could just move things down an octave or three. My mind wandered to my cello lesson, which happened to be the following day. I hadn’t played much this week. I pictured Nan, with her usual smile, asking me how my practicing had gone. “Well, I didn’t work on anything except for Chicken Attack,” I would have to confess. How embarrassing. I racked my brain for a way I could make Chicken Attack educational, more respectable. Then I noticed that playing it as written would put it in thumb position, which Nan had conveniently just gone over with me. “Perfect! I’m going to use Chicken Attack as a thumb position exercise!” I declared. My cat seemed unimpressed.

I sat down with my cello (which caused my cat to flee), and set my thumb on the A and D harmonics. I found I could play the beginning of the verse in the hand position Nan had showed me, without having to shift. Sweet. This was going to work well.​

I was congratulating myself on my brilliance when my eyes fell on this high E:

​Not too scary, though. I knew where that note was, after all: a whole step above my third finger on the A-string. But how to get from point A to point B? (Or, more accurately, point E to point higher E?). I wasn’t sure. “I’ll I just skip all those high Es for now,” I thought to myself. This allowed me to continue for a hot two seconds, until a wild F appeared:

Son of a monkey. If I wanted to play this, I would have to learn how to shift in thumb position. It was inevitable.

I brought the music to my lesson the next day. As Nan and I went over it, it became clear that Chicken Attack would be no mere exercise. It would involve a range of techniques, from basic to advanced! It was the perfect way for a thumb position newbie such as myself to dive right in.

Are you new to thumb position, too? Want to join me? Here are a handful of exercises plucked (sorry) from my practice pad! (Note: the version of Chicken Attack I’m using has been transposed down a fifth from the original, to be a bit more cello-friendly).

Finding thumb position on the harmonics:

Bringing the thumb around in measure 4:

Learning how to move the left hand in an octave structure:

Utilizing technical shifts:

Employing a sneaky pinky move in measure 11:

Chicken Attack used as thumb position training is such a breath of fresh air in the studio! ​Thanks so much to Erica for sharing it with me and the rest of our cello family. -Nan

Just wanted to say a big thank you for your website, and excellent articles. I am adult beginner on the cello, although have played the flute for 20 years. My grandad left me some money when he died and as I have always wanted to play the cello I thought I would get one.

It's such a wonderful instrument although for four or so months I feel very much like a fish out of water. My bowing technique is what I need to work on most at the moment (not the only thing, of course!). So I wanted to say thank you for your excellent blog posts on bowing. My teacher is good but sometimes I feel like the 'why' and 'how' bits are left out. So for example, I asked about how to bow (eg. what is the arm movement and where does it come from) and he just told me to relax my arm - of course, you need a relaxed arm, but I needed some more help. I am also trying to finally get a natural thumb position with my bow holding hand. Your zombie post makes absolute sense, but my hand still doesn't feel comfortable -hoping it can be achieved with small hands. I will keep on trying and am going to see if my teacher can help me fit one of the cello grips (like the cellophant).I'm in my 20s and I am having great fun with my 74 year old friend who has just taken up the violin. Our duets are quite a laugh, although maybe not so for the poor neighbors! Thank you once again.

Many of us can relate to the bow issue this cellist described. The concept of a relaxed bow hand/arm is one thing, but putting it into practice...

...and making it feel easy...

...while making a decent sound...

...is a whole other struggle altogether!

Here are a few exercises to help normalize the feel of the bow and the motion of the right arm so you can eventually forget about it.

Mostly.

Ricochet and Tapping

These exercises, developed by my cello guru, Martha Gerschefski, are so sneakily helpful. They provide tons of time for you to focus on holding the bow without the pressure of making a good sound. This is a big deal, since our need to make a good sound can sometimes take precedence over an ideal bow interface--and we end up learning a hand/arm action that isn't ergonomic at all.

RICOCHET BOW

Holding the bow normally, place it on a middle string about 3/4 the way to the tip (in the upper part of the bow)

Grab the bow stick about 1/4 of the bow length from the tip with your LEFT hand (both hands are on the bow now)

Use the left hand as a stabilizer while you set your bow hand.

Let go with your left hand and twist your forearm outward (keeping wrist rigid) to lift the tip of the bow off the string

Let the bow fall back down and bounce on the string like a ball until it stops on its own (repeat, since it will not work well at first)

"Fix" your bow hand (as in Steps 1-3) as often as possible, since the bow will feel like sliding out of the hand

Keep in mind this will not sound good at all!

An excerpt from Martha's The Start

TAPPING BOW

This will be the same as RICOCHET, except you will control the bow with your bow hand in between bounces to make specific rhythm patterns with the hits (do not try to make this sound good!)

Both of these exercises, and combinations of the two, are going to give you lots of training time with an ergonomic bow hand, so it should soon become more comfortable.​

Table Glides

We don't naturally do straight lines!

As far as the "how to bow" issue is concerned, the main problem I see the most often is crooked bowing. To clarify: If left unchecked, the bow will naturally make a motion in the arc of a smile across the strings. Blame it on our physiology! (For some reason, evolution hasn't provided more cello-playing adaptations. )

​To complicate matters, students will move their arms in complex and stressful ways in order to fix the crooked bowing.

I have found that the best way to counteract all of this is with an exercise I call "table glides." Again, it focuses on training the relaxed motion of the arm without any sound-production distraction.

​This is adapted from Martha's exercise, Piano Glides.

TABLE GLIDES

Sit or stand at the straight edge of a table or counter so it is at about waist height

Place your fingers on the top edge of the table right in front of your navel. Be sure they are lined up on the edge and that you are touching the table with the tips of your fingers. Your wrist should curve inward to keep your fingers on the edge in this position (see photo 1)

Curve your fingers enough so your curved and relaxed thumb can lightly run along the outside edge of the table top (see photo 2)

Pull your arm outward from your body with your elbow and then follow the edge of the table with your fingers. Keep them all lined up on the edge and stop when you can't move outward any further (this is the feeling you should have at the tip of the bow).

Then swing your arm back inward, keeping fingers along the edge again.

REPEAT many times a day until your body gets trained to make this feeling occur even when you are holding the bow

Photo 1: Wrist in when hand is in front of you

Photo 2: Thumb along outside edge

​This shows you all the bends and angles that are needed to draw the bow in a straight line (something we don't naturally do!).

Repeating these exercises can train your body well without your having to get too cerebral about it. ​

When these exercises start feeling easy, you can move on to putting the bow to the string--just keep in mind that you will have to keep checking on the motion in order to keep training it effectively.

Do not get distracted by the sound! That will get better eventually...

I hope these exercises help you in your quest for a more ergonomic and relaxed bow interface!

Please leave any feedback or tips for your fellow cellists in the comments section below.

Changing your strings

It's no secret that you need to have short nails to play the cello effectively. But I have found that "short" has different meanings for different people. What exactly is short enough?

Not even close.

No.

Nope.

...still no.

Make the Cut!

The following video is the only tutorial I could find on the subject of cellists' nail length. Near the end, RealCelloGuy explains that you should cut your nails as short as you can "without hurting yourself."

The Long and Short of it...

Great. Cut my nails. Got it.

But what if your nail beds themselves --not your actual nails--are so long that they interfere with your playing?

What can you do when can't cut your nails any shorter?

Nails are gone, but they're still too long...

First of all, let's clarify what I mean by "nail bed." A picture is worth a thousand words:

So now that we have the terminology solidified, grab your equipment (nail clipper and file) and watch my video:

These are my "long" nails. Usually there's NO white!

​Make sense?

This is exactly what Martha recommended to me many years ago, and now the tips of my left hand fingers are super meaty, perfect for easy cello playing--even when my nails are "long."

Need more proof?

Thanks, Erica!

﻿﻿One of my wonderful students graciously allowed me to take a picture of the progress she has made with her nail bed recession efforts. The nail on the left has been filed (in the way I describe in the video) for many weeks now, and the nail on the right has been trimmed normally.

The difference she has created is obvious!

Need equipment?

Okay, it's time to get to work! Here's what I recommend you use:

KlipIt is the best!

I own two sets of these. I have never found a more substantial and effective nail clipper--and I have gone through quite a few!